The art of college football recruiting flips: ‘It’s almost like a breakup. It’s so disheartening’

Sterling Sanders could feel the tears coming on.

It was late October and Sanders was elated. He’d just committed to Boston College inside coach Bill O’Brien’s office. A handshake sealed the deal.

The three-star defensive lineman from Blytheville, S.C., had always dreamed of playing at the Power 4 level but wasn’t sure whether the opportunity would ever come. That changed when Boston College became his first — and only — P4 offer in early October. And the offer was too good to pass up.

There were tears of joy.

“I couldn’t believe I was going to make it this far,” Sanders said.

There was one problem: He had been committed to Georgia Southern since June. He developed a close relationship with coach Clay Helton and the entire Eagles staff, particularly “Miss Lex,” as Sanders called director of on-campus recruiting Lex Villarreal. She, as much as anyone, had comforted him through the death of a high school teammate.

Now he had to tell her and the rest of the coaching staff that he’d just committed to another school.

“I really loved Georgia Southern. Georgia Southern did everything for me,” Sanders said. “It was very hard to flip.

“I was like, ‘OK, let me make this big decision. I have to put my big boy pants on.’”

Sanders called his position coach to break the news but got voicemail, so he texted rather than leave a message. He texted Villarreal, as well, and was relieved when Georgia Southern staffers wished him well and told him they understood his decision.

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But flipping was still hard on him, as it is for many prospects who have a change of heart and end up going back on their word — often after being committed to their former school for several months.

And it only gets more difficult — for both prospects and programs — the closer a flip occurs to the early signing period, which begins Wednesday.

“It’s so interesting because when you flip a kid, it’s super exciting. But when you lose a kid, it’s devastating,” said a Big Ten recruiting staffer who was granted anonymity in exchange for candor. “You build that relationship and you know their birthdays and you know what’s going on in their life — (if) they have prom coming up or homecoming or whatever it may be, and ‘Oh, he took his girlfriend out on a date’ or ‘It’s his girlfriend’s birthday.’

“You invest so much time that when they flip, it’s almost like a breakup. It’s so disheartening.”

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According to the 247Sports database, there have been 504 decommitments and counting in the 2025 cycle.

In the past seven days, there have been 35 flips. Three of the nation’s top six quarterbacks switched their commitment during a five-day span last month — Bryce Underwood (LSU to Michigan), Husan Longstreet (Texas A&M to USC) and Julian Lewis (USC to Colorado).

Oftentimes a school knows when a flip is inevitable.

Four-star linebacker Dawson Merritt said Alabama coaches had an idea of what might be coming after online recruiting services started forecasting him to Nebraska. He proved them right when he flipped to the Cornhuskers on Nov. 14.

“I wouldn’t say they were anticipating it,” Merritt said of the Alabama staff. “But they weren’t shocked or anything.”

The first hint a prospect might be wavering, the Big Ten staffer said, is when he starts to visit other programs despite already being committed elsewhere. Sometimes prospects will downplay the seriousness of those visits, but part of the job in any recruiting department is to become an expert at reading the signs.

“(A prospect will) tell his position coach at the school that he’s committed to, ‘Hey, I just want to take an OV here just to check it out,’” the staffer said. “‘A trip for my mom, Coach. A trip for my mom.’ And then it comes down the line, and that’s where they end up going.

“Very rare is it a flip that you don’t know about. Flips you don’t know about tend to happen literally within the 24 hours of signing day and someone’s offered more (name, image and likeness money).”

Indeed, with the introduction of NIL into college sports, plenty of flips can be financially motivated. At last year’s Under Armour All-America Game media day, one prospect said a school told him if he committed early and helped bring other recruits into the class, he could earn $40,000 a month until he signed. Another recruit said a school offered him a signing bonus equivalent to the price of “a really nice car.”

“I think with NIL … some people love the opportunity, the brand, where they sit on the depth chart and they love the coaches,” the recruiting staffer said. “And some of them will go to a school and flip for $50,000 more.

“That’s one of those, ‘How do you react?’ If it’s about the money, did that kid give us a chance to put more money on the table and we didn’t have it, we couldn’t do it, we didn’t feel like he was valued at that number? Or it’s like, ‘OK, you know what? This is going to be a numbers game and we’re going to keep battling.’”

Merritt, ranked No. 120 overall in the Class of 2025, said another top prospect who flipped in a previous cycle told him the head coach asked to give him three days to see whether the school could come up with more money to keep him. The prospect still flipped, but with that in mind, Merritt gave Alabama and its collective a two-day window to retain him before he called Nebraska coaches and flipped to the Cornhuskers.

“I’ve heard a lot of stories,” Merritt said. “So I wanted to tell Alabama first just in case they were going to try to do something crazy to try to keep me. I wanted to make sure I told them first.”

The Crimson Tide ultimately didn’t make any NIL changes, said Merritt, who lives in Kansas and first started seriously thinking about nearby Nebraska when he watched the Cornhuskers beat Colorado 28-10 in September.

His process began as many flips do.

“It basically just starts with almost, like, flirting with the other school a little bit,” he said.  “They’ll text you every now and then and then maybe give you a call and you’ll entertain it.”

Midway through the fall, Merritt made a pros and cons list with his parents for Nebraska and Alabama. Nebraska came out on top.

He first broke the news to the Alabama staff and then had a video call with Nebraska coach Matt Rhule to tell him the good news.

“Then I called the defensive coordinator and they were actually in a defensive position meeting, which was amazing,” Merritt said. “I called him and told him and they all started jumping up in the meeting room. It was super funny.”

Merritt, of course, didn’t know it at the time, but Nebraska’s defensive coordinator, Tony White, would execute his own flip a few weeks later when he left to become the new defensive coordinator at Florida State.

The Big Ten staffer said that though it’s very frustrating to lose a prospect, there’s something to be said for being the flipper as opposed to the flippee.

“That,” the staffer said, “is so satisfying.”

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Don’t be surprised when there are a host of flips this week during the early signing period.

Last-minute NIL offers can change everything. And the transfer portal has made it such that high school recruits feel as though they need to issue a commitment as early as possible to lock down a spot in a class — even if they’re not truly ready to make a decision.

“You really go into the season just confused and lost, just trying to figure out where your team’s going to stand,” said three-star defensive lineman Wilnerson Telemaque, who flipped from Wisconsin to West Virginia in early November and still intends to sign with the Mountaineers despite coach Neal Brown’s firing Sunday evening.

“Because of the transfer portal, there’s not a lot of schools taking as many high school kids as they used to. So now, they tell us to do our OVs in the summer, make sure we lock in a spot and then see how it goes during the season. Now, with colleges giving more uncommittable offers during the season, sadly, those offers that you think are real, they’re actually real for transfer portal guys.”

The hardest part of flipping, Merritt said, is breaking the news to the coaching staff from the previous school.

Merritt marked off an entire day to call Alabama head coach Kalen DeBoer, outside linebackers coach Christian Robinson and general manager Courtney Morgan to explain his decision.

“That was probably the hardest thing I’ve done in my recruiting process,” he said. “I wanted to do it the right way. I didn’t want to just kind of flip or text people. I wanted to call a lot of the guys.”

Three-star running back Justin Thurman, who flipped from Notre Dame to Kansas in mid-November, did the same.

“I obviously had a respectful conversation with the coaches at Notre Dame,” Thurman said. “I just told them that basically, ‘I feel like I’ve decided to flip my commitment and thank you for the opportunity’ because not everybody gets those opportunities to play high-caliber football. But at the end of the day, I really felt like it was the best decision for me to flip schools.”

He made it clear he didn’t want to burn any bridges with Notre Dame.

“You never know what can happen in this college world, especially with just all the dynamics … just really since the transfer portal came into effect.”

In the meantime, Merritt, Thurman, Telemaque and Sanders said they feel at peace now that their decision is made, the flip complete. All that’s left is to make it official Wednesday with the paperwork.

“My advice to an athlete flipping, I just feel like once you flip, just know that you’re making the right move, the right decision,” said three-star safety Charleston Floyd, who flipped from Georgia Southern to Old Dominion in October.

“(You’re) just putting yourself before anything, following your heart. If you feel like it’s the best move for you, make the move.”

(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; photo courtesy of Sterling Sanders)